Seasonal

Winter Squash for Seasonal Eats–and Weight Loss

2 February 2012 by Jean Johnson
Squash is much maligned in SAD (Standard American Diet)--especially winter squash. It's largely reserved for pumpkin pies and acorn halves baked with yet more unimaginative SAD stuff: brown sugar and butter. Not that I don't enjoy an acorn trussed up in such decadent fashion now and then. It's just that ...

First Summer Squash of the Year & the Last of the Sugar Snap Peas

21 July 2011 by Jean Johnson
Letting the seasons change what's on your plate is such a groove. Tonight it took the form of flash cooking a just-pulled cippolini onion from last fall's planting, a minced clove of garlic, whole sugar snaps, a green and yellow zucc sliced off on the diagonal, and a chop of ...

The Green and The Gold–Plus Jimmy Crack Corn

18 June 2011 by Jean Johnson
It started when Linda stayed in my 2 room b&b over the weekend. I made Polenta Waffles that are always a hit. Linda went on to the next leg of her vacation, but as so often happens, I'm on a roll. That's how it happens when you're a basically lazy, ...

Thoughts on the Kitchen Garden

11 February 2011 by Jean Johnson
The garden has been my greatest teacher. It has taught me that tender broccoli leaves make perfectly lovely winter greens. That like young kale they need just flash in the pan to turn mild and tender. And that in spring before the snow peas are ready, a riotous chop of ...

From the Garden to the Table, During All Four Seasons–Mostly

20 December 2010 by Jean Johnson
So far so good. I've still not bought fresh produce (except pomegranates, lemons, and some Clementines) and since the slim garden days of last spring. It's getting to be slim pickins' for sure given Portland's November snow storm that way laid my broccoli and gave the kale and cabbage a ...

Collector’s Items? Heck Yeah!

2 December 2010 by Jean Johnson
The measure free trilogy books will surely become collectible. After all, Cooking Beyond Measure and Hippie Kitchen are the first cookbooks without measurements written in the United States in over a century. And when Grow Your Own Comes out next year, it will be the third. More, these books are ...

Lasta-vera Frittata with Blue Corn and Hopi Memories & Music

20 October 2010 by Jean Johnson
Yes, I know the lastavera doesn't quite work since vera means spring in Italian. But hey, it's close, and it conveys so well the idea of using vegetables the fall harvest brings through the door. A few posts ago I was lastavering with a grain salad. This time it's with ...

Not Primavera But Lastavera–Harvest Bounty Lush With White Beans and Walnuts

11 October 2010 by Jean Johnson
There's one like this in Hippie Kitchen on page 75, but that was made with summer savory one sunny day in June. Now the days are more golden than sunny, but harvest is plentiful as this Lastavera shows. Broccoli, tomatillos, green chiles, leeks, tomatoes, and garlic--all from the garden--all flash ...

Why Hippie Cook?

10 October 2010 by Jean Johnson
On a recent Facebook thread, someone said, "if what you do--cooking from scratch with garden produce--means being a hippie, I'm all for it." The writer had apparently dismissed the counterculture of the Sixties--hippies--as a group of free loaders mainly interested in drugs, sex, and rock & roll. And why wouldn't ...

Freezing French Cut Green Beans & Happy Birthday to John Lennon

9 October 2010 by Jean Johnson
I don't have a cake to offer on behalf of John Lennon's 70th birthday. But I think if the man were here he'd welcome my French cut green beans with knowing look through his blue tinted granny glasses. Honest food from my no chem garden. A celebration of harvest. Putting ...